It was after one in the morning when she got home. She trudged up the four narrow flights to her apartment, undressed and took a bath to save time in the morning, then collapsed into bed with a cup of camomile tea. Despite her exhaustion and the soothing warmth of the tea, she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Tiny rat’s teeth of anxiety gnawed at her insides. Not about losing her job; she’d been through that before, too many times. But she was sure that the big, beat-up looking man—she couldn’t remember his name—who’d spoken to her outside the dry cleaning store was a policeman. He’d said he wasn’t, but of course he would, wouldn’t he, if he were undercover?
There was only one reason she could think of that the police would be interested in her. Three weeks ago one of her regular customers at the dry cleaning store had asked her to do him a favour, to hold a package till a friend came to pick it up. “Don’t worry,” he’d said. “It’s not drugs, and it’ll just be for a couple of hours. And my friend will give you something for your trouble.” He’d seemed nice, well dressed and polite, and he’d always had time to chat, so she’d agreed.
God, how could she have been so stupid? Of course it had been drugs. Or maybe child pornography. The man who’d come to pick it up later in the day, who had given her fifty dollars, had been sneaky-looking and very nervous. She hadn’t seen her customer since.
On the other hand, she thought hopefully, maybe the big man was exactly what he’d claimed to be, an old friend of her late husband’s. There had been something familiar about him, like she’d seen him somewhere before, but she wasn’t sure where or when. He wasn’t bad looking, either, and while he’d been dressed casually, his clothing had been good quality. Maybe too good for a policeman.
Tea finished, she closed her eyes and fantasized briefly about being whisked away on some fabulous adventure by a tall, dark stranger. She knew in her heart, though, that if he wasn’t a cop, he was probably just like most of the other men she’d known, after only one thing. And, sadly, she knew that if he asked nicely enough she’d give it to him.
chapter three
Tuesday, December 14
Shoe was awakened by the creak of floorboards in the hall outside his bedroom. The clock radio on the dresser read five-thirty. He started to get up to investigate, then remembered his houseguest. Rolling over, he went back to sleep. When he awakened again at seven-thirty, he got up, showered, and went downstairs. Jack had spread plastic drop cloths in the living room and was scouring loose paint from the window frames with a steel brush Shoe hadn’t known he’d owned.
“I was going to start in the kitchen,” Shoe said.
“That paint you bought,” Jack said, gesturing with the brush toward the pails of paint by the entrance to the living room. “It’s no good for kitchens. Ain’t very washable.”
“Where’d you get the brush?” Shoe asked.
“Borrowed it from your neighbour,” Jack replied. Shoe hadn’t really got to know any of his neighbours, with the exception of a curmudgeonly old fellow who lived across the street and who hadn’t given Shoe the time of day since he’d asked him to please scoop after his dog pooped in Shoe’s yard. “Old guy lives across the road,” Jack said.
“You seem to know what you’re doing.”
He shrugged. “Painted a few houses.”
“What if I paid you?”
“Got nothin’ to do till my houseboat dries out,” Jack said. “I’ll do it for a coupla weeks’ room and board. How’s that?”
Deal struck, Jack returned to scraping and Shoe went into the kitchen. After his breakfast, he called the number on the card the police had left, quoted the case number handwritten on the back, and was put through to a Sergeant Matthias of the Vancouver Homicide Squad.
“I’ll be at home all morning,” he told Matthias.
“The investigators will be there within the hour,” Matthias said.
Come to us, they beckoned to her from the grave.
No, she silently cried. I can’t.
We love you.
Then why did you leave me? What did I do?
You didn’t love us enough.
I did. I did love you. I loved you. I love you.
Not enough.
How much is enough?
Come to us. We’ll show you.
No! No! You are liars.
She didn’t remember waking up. Nor going to sleep. She lay, fully clothed but for shoes, under a light blanket that bore the scent of cedar. It was morning, but the curtains were drawn and the bedroom was dark. The only sounds in the room were the soft whisper of air circulation fans and the gentle hiss of rain on the slope of the tile roof outside the window. For a brief moment she was suspended in a void between sleep and wakefulness, her mind calm and free of thought or memory or fear. It was what she imagined death to be like, a comforting stillness where there was neither past nor future, just a formless present. She wanted to stay there forever, but she was caught by a bitter current and flung toward the howling light of awareness. She had to muster every ounce of will to keep from screaming.
Patrick, too, had finally abandoned her.
Victoria was fourteen when her mother took her own life with an overdose of sleeping pills and painkillers. She’d been suffering for a long time from a very painful form of inoperable cancer. Victoria’s father may have assisted, but the police hadn’t tried very hard to prove it.
After her mother’s death, Victoria made her father’s life a misery, seeking relief or oblivion or self-destruction in booze and drugs and promiscuity. When Frank McRae couldn’t take it any longer, he sent Victoria to a private girls’ school in Nanaimo. She hated the place and did everything she could to get thrown out. When she was caught giving oral sex to a boy in his car in the parking lot, the headmistress called her father and told him to come and get her. Frank McRae left Vancouver that same night, but as he drove onto the ferry at Horseshoe Bay, the boarding ramp somehow retracted too soon. His car plunged into the harbour and he drowned.
Victoria was sent to live with her aunt Jane, her mother’s older sister, and her husband. Childless academics, they hadn’t known much, if anything, about teenaged girls, outside of what they’d read in books. On her third day there, Victoria locked herself in the bathroom, filled the tub with water as hot as she could stand it, and got in with all her clothes on. She then slashed her wrists with a razor blade. She’d heard or read somewhere that hot water was supposed to dull the pain. It hadn’t. It had hurt like hell and she’d started yelling. Uncle Dick had broken the door down.
It was an effort to get out of bed. Her body felt leaden and sore. She dragged herself into the bathroom, turned on the light, and looked at herself in the mirror. Her skin was sallow and mottled and loose, and her eyes were underscored by dark smudges that looked like bruises. She could see every pore, every blemish, every wrinkle. Somehow, though, she found the energy to undress and get into the shower.
As she was dressing, there was a gentle knock on the bedroom door.
“Come in,” she called.
Kit opened the door. “I heard you moving about,” she said. She sounded like she had a sore throat. “Did you get some sleep?”
“Yes, thanks,” Victoria said.
“Do you want some breakfast?” Kit asked.
“God, no,” Victoria answered automatically, but then realized she was hungry. “Maybe some